[Robert]

This is a question that can have no answer yet the question keeps coming up in my mind. This assumes that there is no soul, no afterlife, no non-corporeal existance after we die. I'm not completely convinced this is true, but lets assume it to be true in the context of this thread. The question is... How does it feel to not exist? Obviously, to feel anything one must first exist. But what if one were not to exist, either through dying, being aborted, never being conceived, etc. How does this feel? How does one feel who has never been conceived, never existed, never had a thought, never had a feeling.

[force5]

IMHO; See, hear, taste, smell or feel are subsets of some of the organic things that first must exist in order to experience any of these awareness factors. Of course, I don't think any of these things are possible either before or after our short stay as a living member of this system we call earth.

I do not like anything about this conclusion, but once you explore something and discover new things, it's very difficult to erase this stuff from your overall concept of the way things are. I would love to be proven wrong without having to simply be told to have "faith".

Be carefull what you look for. You might find it.

Cheers; John

[Omni]

Coincedently i thought of this this morning when i woke up. A recent death in my surrounding made me think of it. I think there is nothing after death just as there is nothing before life but then again...i once had a severe accident and was in the hospital and i remember that one time i could see my body from the inside just as if i was not part of it. Illusion? Was i asleep and dreamt it? I'm not sure but it was pretty convincing nonetheless. There are more things like that that happen to people sometimes but it's my believe that it's just wishfull thinking...fear of death => God....afterlife etc. By the way ..my memory of the accident and the first week after the accident is gone (or was never there to be more precize) but i was alive off course...

[Marketa]

About those memories: a human brain is very complicated, beyond our imagination and it can show you or make you feel anything... I know it from my own experience: this summer I spend a month in hospital with serious mental illness. I saw, heard, felt many really weird things and everything was so real - I simply lived for a month in completely different world. But one doesn't need to be ill to realize how powerful a brain is: what about your dreams? They are very complex, you can see, hear, feel - I e.g. had a dream in which I was looking up English words in a dictionary (I'm not native English speaker) - after I woke up I could tell which words I saw there - in alphabetical order!
How does it feel... I also solved this question, but it isn't so difficult as it seems. While you sleep and don't have any dreams - that's how it - approximately - feels. Nothing special. You know: if you can't feel, see, hear etc. anything, you have no senses - you simply ARE NOT, which means that you don't exist within time, space etc. One notice: Why I do think that if you sleep and don't have dreams it's similar to not exist? Because during that time your brain, your senses are very muffled, your consciousness is sleeping (too)) and so you are nearest the state without senses, brain.

[zeroca]

Buddhists have very interesting theory about joining to nirvana, and nirvana is considered to be nothing. As I know joining to nirvana means-“fading away”. Any other sorts of death is considered to be kind of change, which experiences the soul when changing the bodies. The life in one body is called karma (if I’m not wrong), but the unity of all karmas is called the cycle of Sansara, so they believe that the soul (e.g. the individual, who we know, but not his body) is a soul, who is as old as this world but it has changed bodies, karmas and often doesn’t remember the previous lives. A few of them do. The only way to get out of sansaras’ cycle is to fade away eternally, to “join the father” (father is meant god). 20 years ego I read the article about some yogi, who experienced some meditation, had some visions that he described and also saw “abyss of nirvana”, as he mentioned it. That was very interesting. If I recall the details, I’ll write it to you. I think that to become nothing means not to exist. How you can feel anything if you don’t exist? You begin to sense from the moment you start to exist, don’t you? That's puzzling...

[Marketa]

Well, it's not puzzling at all. There are many things which are, but not this one. If you don't exist, you don't feel anything (you have no senses, no way to feel).
I don't believe in soul. OK, there is something I would call a soul, but I prefer the name consciousness or just "I". This "soul" is larger when you are reading an interesting book, and it's smaller when you are sleeping. It's based on physical objects and it was "created" by evolution itself. I don't think it's embarrassing to be made of "simple" physical things (like moleculs, atoms) - neither it's embarrassing for my body nor for my soul. There is often one question about it: if we are really made ONLY from physical objects, like atoms, don't we just follow the strict rules of physics? In my opinion this question is nonsense. Hence I AM set of atoms and their relations etc. - also the set of atoms etc. IS me. I don't follow rules of physics more than they follow my thoughts...

[zeroca]

To analyze it isn’t puzzling (you analyze things better than anyone), but to imagine it-really is (at least for me)

Listen!

Imagine yourself that you don’t exist,
You will suppose it as somebody's death.
Then look at yourself from the outside,
You say: poor guy, he’s alive,
But he can imagine himself dead so well
That even is lying down as dead,
Is trying to pretend as if weren't dead,
Yes, he's dead and alive at the same time
Observing his death from the outside…

[Marketa]

It would be nice, really. But I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. Once you, or well, not you, but once one is dead, he/she can't see, hear, feel anything - there is no way, no senses, no such complicated thing like consciousness, which arises from complexity of many, many interactions between particles, atoms, moleculs, cells, etc. which went through very long and unique process of evolution that is briefly repeated in every new baby...

[Masa Hiryuu]

My question is, is there a such thing as not existing?

What if energy Kenetic, Electric, Thermal ect.. are consiousness?

If we describe consciousness as information, (memories, feelings, sences, thoughts) passed as pulses of electric energy between synapses in the brain, then when you die, that energy must either stay as electrical or convert to another form (if we are to believe reletivity). Now, what about the information stored in the brain? Would that be passed along if that energy were too disperse and either become kenetic or thermal energy? Would that information there just be scrambled into a sea of information?

Mabee that information is like binary, only its not 1s and 0s but more like several quantum superpositions waiting for an observer to collapse it into viable information. Now, when a baby is concieved it must get energy from somewhere (chemical reactions, producing thermal/electric energy) in order for the brain to start working. Would that brain then be able to recover, analyze, sort, and write over any information contained within that energy? It would be a shambled mess but there would be information there.

So I dont think that there can be such a thing as not existing, your memories would just be broken up into tiny little quantum bits and picked up and used in everything from chemical reactions to parts of other peoples memories and converted into other forms of energy. In other words there would be no point where you would stop existing, even if it was just 1 quantum byte of information (either a part of a memory or an idea). it would probably be like an instant paused in itme that you would feel, without end, or untill that energy was used for something else and then you wold no longer be Bob or Sue but you would be a part of a newborn baby or a tree. (I know its being very general but im trying to keep this simple)

Unless you can destroy energy, then i cant see anyway that you cannot exist.

[Marketa]

I think this depends on what do you consider to be "you". Of course "you" can become just another kind of "material" and exist eternaly, changing and changing... But if you mean that you are the tall young man with very concrete memories, experiences etc, then you don't exist eternaly - in fact you are different every tiny moment - but till you have an amount of concrete memories, you are you...